I watched Billy the Kid at SXSW. I felt good about it on many levels during the viewing and later in Q&A with the director Jennifer Venditti; unfortunately, I missed the big premiere event with Billy and his mom in attendance which I’m told went smashingly. But, even when walking out of the film, I found that some people who saw it with me viewed the film as John Anderson, who reviewed the film at Hot Docs for Variety, did. He writes “anything beyond a casual, surface reading of the film reveals an appallingly callous act of exploitation.” That is an alarming accusation, and one I feel compelled to rebut on behalf of Billy, if I may be so bold. Bear with me for a moment.

One of the top posts on my blog is a short note about the death of Stephen Heywood, the subject of Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan’s So Much So Fast (which I coincidently saw at last year’s Hot Docs). The film played several festivals and eventually found a home on Frontline on PBS. I believe that the news of his death would generate significant site traffic because of his amazing story. Heywood was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative disease that leaves its victims physically unable to move or even breath, yet the mind remains intact and alert; the body becomes a prison and while death can come in 2-5 years, it’s also possible to live with lots of help from technology. Unlike the vast majority of people who receive this diagnosis and see it as a death sentence, Stephen and his family took a different approach.

You have to watch the movie to get a sense of the strength of these people, but one thing that is so crystal clear is that because they choose to care for their loved one, to not accept death when life is possible, and to dispense with the typical guilt accompanying the intense commitment of caring for someone who needs extra, is indeed unusual. Why do I go on about this when responding to Billy the Kid? So Much So Fast helped me to understand that what we might label as disability is really just another shape that life takes. Our Western culture has taught us to distance ourselves both physically and mentally from anyone who is different.

People with developmental disabilities are separated in schools; old people are segregated into nursing homes; even people who live outside some “normal” zone of heterosexuality or gender find it hard to participate fully in our society. A vast number of people live on the fringe and we haven’t found ways or the heart to include them. Billy has some issues but the wonderful thing about the film is that we are forced to accept Billy, with his awkward interactions, his occasional temper flare-ups, etc., without a diagnosis or label that would help us to assign him to the fringe. Actually, the SXSW version had a brief end card to note a diagnosis but Venditti said she wanted to remove and did, as I understand.

Mr. Anderson believes that following Billy around “shows a willful blindness to the agony of adolescence in general, and a particular myopia concerning Billy.” The point of following Billy around, as I see it, is to call attention to how ridiculous this practice of ostracism is–Billy, with all of his awkwardness, deals with the same stuff we all do. He has to find a way to talk to others when it is uncomfortable for him to do so; he seeks a girlfriend and must find a way to woo the one he likes; he must deal with the fact that his stepfather has chosen to leave their family.

He has small failures and spectacular triumphs. He gets excited and angry, and yes, his emotions are out there for everyone to see. It might be normal to pretend like it’s easy to talk to strangers or like we can easily blow off rejection by a loved one, but is that really how we feel? Do we need to repress everything to be considered normal? In order to be loved, must we constantly restrict what we say and feel? This film rejects those notions. Billy is the hero of the story, warts and all.

Every doc is exploitative in that we take stories. It rarely seems the people who participate get back more than they invest but, there are some who enjoy the process, the attention. Billy, I believe, will feel for a long time that he participated in something that he can be proud of. At SXSW, I attended the film’s after-party where he was mixing and mingling with some of Austin’s overly cool crowd (maybe a bit of finding people who would accept him away from his rural Maine home), along with his beaming mother, elated by the support and good will they felt from the crowd at the screening. (Photo by Danielle Digiacomo, “billy and billy”)

For Mr. Anderson to call Billy’s story a “freak-show” and say that films that chronicle such people “make audiences happy they’re not the subject of the film” says more to me about him as a viewer than it does about the movie or Billy. I walked out of the theater hoping that when confronted with someone different, that I would be more accepting, try harder to interact and engage, be less afraid of the unknown. I think a lot of people saw pieces of themselves in Billy, which is only a problem if you don’t like that part of yourself or can’t come to terms with it. I hope you’ll, at least, take that Variety review with a grain of salt and watch the movie for yourself rather than allowing that perspective to dictate your interest. It’s one perception among many.

[Thanks to Joel Heller for the tip on the review.]